FM: John Arnold, Ph.D.

Recently, while watching the homegoing ceremony of singer Aretha Franklin, I was taken aback by what I heard as her eulogy. The Dixie-style preacher ignored Aretha’s role as a mother and a pillar for civil and women’s rights. He did not mention Aretha bailed out of jail Angela Davis, the former Black Panther and activist who was persecuted for conspiracy of murder and who was eventually found not guilty. Reverend Jasper Williams did not mention Aretha, along with Harry Belafonte held several concerts to raise money to help pay the SCLC employees’ salaries when Dr. King's money was running low. The preacher did not mention Aretha was the first woman to be inducted to the rock and Roll Hall of Fame, that she was honored by President Bill Clinton at the White House, by President Bush with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, sang at Jimmy Carter's Inauguration two of Barack Obama Inaugurations, she sang for the Pope, she was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor, as well as winning 18 Grammy Awards for her body of music while she was a single mother of four boys.

Instead of praising Aretha, holding her as an example of what a black woman and mother could do; the preacher choose to spend his time ridiculing black women for being incapable of raising black boys. When the good Reverend C. L. Franklin was comatose, Aretha and her siblings did not send their father to a nursing home, they took care of him themselves for five years in the same home they grew up in; yet the good preacher chastised the black community for not teaching children about Black Lives Matter. 

There were a few times during the eulogy where I wondered if the preacher was at the wrong funeral. But what concerns me most is how many people thought the preacher’s message was apropos, in contrast to Aretha’s family publicly proclaiming the preacher’s sermon as "offensive and distasteful.” Proponent say, that the preacher’s message needed to be said. That the preacher told the truth and sometimes the truth hurts. My question is what of the message of Reverend Jasper Williams was applicable to the life and works of Aretha Franklin's eulogy at this supposed private ceremony?

It is amazing how many people pick up on something that someone else said, because it sounds pretty, and they just run with it. For example; we often hear about single black mothers as if they are the immorality of society and the reason our community is going to hell in a hand basket, completely ignoring real statistics confirming the traditional family has changed for all cultures.

People are not getting married as early as they used to, not having as many children as they used to, they are not staying in abuse relationships as they used to. And, the sons and daughters of these "single mothers" are not suffering in the way suggested by the social engineers and thought police. Although divorced, many of these children still regularly see their fathers. They also have uncles, cousins, brothers, grandfathers, and stepfathers. Times have changed. It's not 1950 anymore. Get with the program and stop trying to put the genie back in the bottle. If the good preacher really wants to affect change he might start at his own front door. When will his institution “allow” more women to head the black church?